Killi Went to Oz

SORRY IT'S BEEN SO LONG MY LITTLE BLOG!!!

I gotta say the 24 hour bus ride was quite an epic journey. Not in any stupendously interesting or enlightening manner, but epic nonethless! Quite obviously I didn't really sleep and was in quite a dazed state by the time I arrived at 7.40am.

After arriving in Rainbow Beach for the third time in my few months over here, I was welcomed by Sam, one of the receptionists, and Toby, my new boss. I was pretty much instantly introduced to the whole backpackers team, having a quick chat with Olly and Phil, who were serving pancakes and later on meeting Simon, the Meet and Greet backpacker. I was pretty tired to say the least so managed to catch up on a bit of sleep and later got a little more acquainted with the rest of the staff. The backpacker's room was pretty sweet, a sofa, TV, DVD player, fridge and kitchenette. Oh and the most important factor...aircon! We didn't do a great deal on my first day, but as I had to be up at 5.30 the next day I spent most of my time chatting with the lads. It was pretty easy to get on with the two English guys, Olly and Si, because myself and Si had similar musical tastes and Olly was pretty mental and a good laugh (constantly quoting stupid films and tv programmes, just like me!) It turned out that they both went to Lincoln Uni as well so they knew where I was from! Phil was quite odd, a funny guy but so definitely German, and could eat for his country if not the world!

My first day on the job was made a whole lot easier by lending my "untrained" hand to all jobs that would normally be done with two people, speeding up the process massively! It was a good laugh as we all just messed around and kept each other amused and chatted about stupid things while we were doing the jobs. Those first few days were a lot easier than I had suspected they might be. I found it really easy getting used to the 5.30 starts even after a couple of late nights! The daytimes here ahve pretty much been filled with sleep or going to the beach to do a bit of bodyboarding.

Our first proper night on the razzle was an impromptu one, having a few beers whilst cooking the dinner and then dancing most of the night away to the local musician, Alan Kelly (I say local, he's Irish but lives in Noosa.) That night ended rather amusingly on the beach with Olly summoning "troops" by attempting a speech from 300, calling upon the Spartans...what a tit!
So the time here has passed pretty much without incident since the first week; work, eat, sleep, drink (not neccesarily in that order) and it was all going really well until they decided that Phil wasn't really suited to the job anymore, and Olly was heading off to do a bit of travelling. I don't really mean "they" as in the establishment, it was mainly the cook Debs that took a dislike to Phil and asked for him to be let go; the rest of us backpackers completely disagreeing with her as he was a really hard worker most of the time!
With them leaving we took on another worker by the name of Mathieu, a French lad with next to no English skills! We were also reduced to three workers meaning a huge amount more work for myself and Mat, but thankfully, and mercifully, the boss, Suze, decided to try and find another worker. This little bit of fortune happened to coincide with the arrival of Ally, who had been in Cracow working in a country pub (and falling for a local) for the last 10 weeks. Ally is now working as the fourth backpacker and will be after I leave.

Before Olly and Phil left we had a couple more good nights, some ending in broken toilet seats, others ending in goon dentist's chair, total memory loss and throwing up, and the last one ending in Phil achieving one of his goals and then falling asleep in front of the bakery in the early hours of the morning to wait for their pies! I really miss working with those two guys, they were so much fun in and out of work and brought the best out of me and Simon (except for Phil's inability to be tidy!)

Just before they left we were given the news that there would be cosmetic changes made to the hostel, mainly consisting of our lovely backpacker room being converted into the reception and the current reception becoming a large Peter Pans agents. This meant we would be relegated to our box of a bedroom and that we would be seperated entirely from and toilet, sink or shower. Though we have no pulling power and the wheels are already set in motion, I'm hoping Suze's quite obvious humanitarian side will win out and try to sort out something better for the backpackers that I'm leaving behind and thos in the future.

My leaving was pretty much always planned to be the 18th Feb, heading down to Brisbane to meet up with Eilidh and go to Soundwave Festival, but event have transpired so that my plans to travel further round Oz have been cut short and he only travelling I'm doing is back to England. With my first choice Uni rejecting my application I've been left with the POSSIBILITY that I'll get an interview from my second choice; I was told to make sure I was in the country just in case. So it is that once I ahve had my fun at Soundwave, I have to catch a flight at 8.40am to Korea, where I'm getting a night's hotel and meals i Seoul before I finally jet off back to chilly England.

Rainbow Beach has been pretty awesome, and pretty relaxing, so I'm very sad to be leaving the place. I'm really glad I met the people I did, Sam, Toby, Suze, Robyn, Debs (the cleaner not the cook), Vera and Xavier. That's not mentioning the backpackers Si, Olly, Phil and Mat, or the other cool people that stayed at the hostel and kept me entertained, and probably kept as equallty entertained, in my drunken silliness!

The adventure isn't over yet, I've a week of doing two jobs (Xavier leaving for France to see his ill Grandma has meant Si has his job and I have both mine and Si's) and Soundwave before my epic 40+ hours from Bris to London. I'll probably have another two entries before I bid this blog a farewell so stick around...those of you who are still reading!

So the free job turned out not to be too bad, working the night manager shift between 10pm and 6am, basically being responsible for closing the public areas and letting in the dumbass's who forget their keys and the late arrivals. Luckily enough the guy who I'm taking over from is really sound, an 18-yr-old lad originally from Reading who works on the reception as well. The main drawback of the whole operation is the lack of solid sleep but it's not killed me yet.

I'm actually only doing it for one more night! I'm off back to Rainbow Beach in the morning (it's only a 24 hour bus journey from here :-S ) to start a job in a hostel, free accomodation and food and a wage of $200 a week; sounds like a crap wage but as I'm only working 3 or so hours a day it means I'll have time to get another job that'll hopefully earn me a bit more money. But I'm really not complaining because anything is better than nothing! My general demeanour has changed entirely, despite still being in essentially the same financial quandry I've at least got something to concentrate on. I still really miss home and would love to have the comfort of my own bedroom and friends and family but that's hopefully going to pass once I've sorted out a bit more a regular life over here. I'm not going to have any reception on my Oz number while I'm in Rainbow so if there's still anyone reading this blog then text me on my English number for the tiem being, I mgiht be able to sort out a replacement Oz SIM.

Hope everyone bck home has had a wicked new year and Christmas; mine's been interesting and I'm hoping that the following months will work out alright!

Miss you all, and thanks so much to those of you who I've spoken to and have reassured me over the past couple of days, I know you've all said there's something you could do but it's been more than helpful just having friendly voices to talk to :-) x x

You'd have thought the lesson would have been learnt that getting hammered the night before an early start and a bus journey, but evidently someone hasn't been paying attention!
The arguments between my stomach and I were started early and continued long into the day, and a pretty long day it was too. The journey up to Townsville was pretty painless, only an Irish lad called Joey chewing my ear off at the start of the journey. The ferry across wasn't too bad either, I sat and read and made no effort to socialise or make eye contact with anyone else!
Base on Magnetic Island is the type of place that really has nothing for you to do except for sit and listen to loud music and drink a lot. Luckily for my stomach my funds were precluding me from such activities so I was left to do my own thing. After checking in I was told to go and speak to the diving instructor who would talk to me about the course which I was starting the next day. Barbara is quite an eccentric and odd Austrian who I could not for the life of me work out the age of. She talked English pretty well but always had a smirk on her face and rarely made eye contact with any of us. The Irish lad, Joey, and myself were both on the course together and sat and spoke to Barbara about what we'd be learning, and being given our Dive Course Manuals, of which we had to read the first of five chapters that night. I was lucky enough to have been booked into a dorm for the first two night, and even more lucky that I was the only on in the room for that evening. After reading the first chapter and acquainting myself with the text I carried on reading my other book and fell asleep.
Our first morning in the classroom was relatively interesting, watching a video on risk and safety was the low point but the video covering the first chapter was at least a good reminder of what I had read the previous night. We went through the basics of the scuba gear and were soon getting ourselves prepared and ready for our first test in the water. With it being a certified course we were bombarded with the same pieces of information and safety checks repeatedly throughout the whole experience just so that it was drilled into our heads. Our first experiences in the pool were just to familiarise ourselves with the skills we would be needing to demonstrate, such as retrieving a lost regulator and replacing our masks whilst underwater. The latter of the two was the most horrible, constantly struggling against getting pool water up my nose was bad enough but knowing I'd have to do it in the sea was not an enticing thought. Despite this I was told that my progress was brilliant considering I was the only one of the five in the group that hadn't done any scuba diving previously. That evening we were given the homework of answering the questions from the first chapter.
A slightly earlier start the next morning, being in the classroom for 8am, using my free breakfast at an advantageous time considering it meant I had a few extra minutes in bed and time enough to move to my new accomodation...a "permenant tent"! We went over the answers from the previous chapter and continued to work our way through the book, watching the corresponding videos to chapters 2 and 3. Another afternoon's scuba skills practice in the pool and we were set the homework of answering ALL of the questions for ALL of the remaining four chapters! Myself and Joey set about doing this as soon as we'd eaten something and didn't finish until about 9.30 that night, doing all of the work whilst sat in the full frontal blaring of the bar's sound system. The major disadvantage of the hostel was the lack of a common area, meaning that the only place you could go was your dorm, or tent in my case, or the bar which always had music blasting out. So an evening of studious activity and it was to my camp bed that I returned. Oh woe is me for the first night I spent in that rotten thing. The French lad who was also in the tent was bright enough to have been keeping some noodles and rice under his bed. This schoolboy error was an open invite to a possum that repeatedly came into the tent, rustled and scratched across the plastic flooring enoguh to wake me at least four times during the night. Not only was this four-legged creature a guest in the tent but so were an army of ants that felt it necessary to use me as a motorway en route to, yet again, the French guy's stash of open Haribo. As you can imagine I didn't sleep too well that evening.
Class was pretty swift on the third day, we marked our work after watching a few more videos and were also made to do a few calculations of residual nitrogen levels using the tables that would become the crux of our avoiding nitrogen over-exposure in future dives. It was all pretty easy but took a while for a couple of the guys in the class to gte their heads round it. The time finally came where we were able to go into the sea with all our scuba skills and practice them and go for a dive around the bay. It was so much fun on that first dive, we had fairly good visibility, 5-6 metres, so were able to see lots of little creatures close up, most notably a smiley faced sea snail and couple of mating stingrays. We also took some break down and sat and fed the fish for about 10 minutes. It was wonderful watching them all jostling and biting away at the squishy bread between our fingers. More skills demonstrations, though some not a tough as I'd first imagined, and we were heading back to the shore, all a little too soon for me but it was good fun for a first dive. We had been checking our guages throughout the dive and once back in the classroom used them to work out our nitrogen levels and how much air we had been using. As it turned out I was doing really well for a first timer, getting a level closer to that of someone with a lot more dives under their belt. Once we had written in the log for our two dives we had to do the exam part of our course and the two swimming elements; swimming 200metres and treading water for 10 minutes, both incredibly easy even for my in my unfit state. The written exam was not difficult and we were able to converse between each other to ensure we understood the question etc. but I managed to half read one and answered it incorrectly leaving me me with a score of 49 out of 50, not the top score but not bad in my eyes. Our final dive would be the next day and we would be able to get our certification cards. That evening myself an Joey sat around listening to music and playing cards. It was pissing it down outside and we'd heard the bar's playlist at least three nights in a row now!
The weather from the previous evening persisted and we were left with the possibility that we might not be able to see anything if we went out in the sea that morning. Tony, the instructor in training, and Barbara went out to locate the guide buoy and when they returned they told us we'd have to go carefully but we'd be able to go out and do the skills we needed to pass the course. The dive was pretty scary, the visibility being down to 1-1.5 metres meaning that swimming around the corals and the sea bed was difficult and un-nerving. We got through it though, battling strong currents and being buffeted by waves. Once we were on land again it was a quick log entry and a short wait until we were given our certified open water diver cards, done and dusted :-)
The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy, all the activity over the previous three days had taken it out of me and I needed to rest up for the party that evening, Magnetic Island's Full Moon New Year's Eve Party!
The first couple of hours of the evening were spent playing silly drinking games with the lads who were on my course and a couple of their mates, resulting in me drinking two thirds of a bottle of rum and being pretty hammered by the time we headed to the party. Thankfully I was with a few of my old friends that evening, finding Chris Cunni, Lauren and Sian outside at the entrance :-) I really don't remember a great deall of the evening apart from not being anywhere near my friends when it was midnight (trying to get sreved at the bar) and then mooching off on my own for the majority of the night and dancing before collapsing into my bed at about 2am.
Of the rest of the time on the island, I mainly spent it drinking water and trying to make myself feel better after drinking such a huge amount of rum. I enjoyed the night thoroughly despite it not being the longest nor the most action packed, but in the same breath it was nothing as good as Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. So it was with a great relief that I left Magnetic Island on 2nd January, heading off to Cairns on the final portion of my Oz Experience bus journey.
My final driver was Ute, a guy obsessed with utes funnily enough, and his antics were funny enough but not a scratch on Disco or Guido, the two drivers who I took great pleasure in giving special mention to in my OzEx feedback form.
The last section of my OzEx journey would not have been complete without some sort of "experience" and we were lucky enough to stop at a crocodile farm just outside of Tully. The croc farm is there so that the crocs that are causing a nuisance to the public can have a place to live. Not a bad life either, free food every day and a girlfriend/boyfriend for each resident! The crocs that are born in captivity are actually bred deliberately, and even more deliberately incubated at a temperature so that they are predominantly males. This means that they will grow to be larger and therefore have more skin for belts and boots, and more meat for croc steaks and jerky. We were actually lucky enough to be able to hold a baby croc and have our photos taken with it along with an array of other creatures; bearded dragons, snakes, cockatoos. It was a very pleasant end to what had been, in all, a wonderfully interesting and enjoyable series of bus journeys up the coast.

Upon my arrival to Cairns I was horrified to discover that my credit card has been cancelled and my current account card is now inactive leaving me with no money. I'm working in a hostel for free accomodation and am on the job hunt, hopefully I'll sort something out, of not I don't know what the hell I'll do! :-)

"It's all part of the experience"

Though the most of us were staying in different hostels, it was a tradition for the company with whom we had booked our trip that a table would be reserved for us at Beaches hostel and we would get a jug of beer or carafe of wine for every four people who turned up. With it also being Christmas Eve it was hard for myself and the two Swedes, who were also in my room, to turn down the offer of free booze! There weren't too many people that turned up for the free beer meeting but stragglers eventually made thier way in and we were in full flowing party mood by around 9.30 (most of us quite pissed by this point also). The crew from the boat turned up and it ended up being a brilliantly fun Christmas Eve, all of us as inebriated as the other, all dancing like absolute crazy people and all sweating like no one's business! The licensing laws in Australia are incredibly strict, and because Christmas Day is a public holiday it means the bar literally stops serving at midnight and you are then forced to be out of the pub by 12.30! I did not understand this and swiftly found myself out on the street talking to random strangers and not having a clue where all my friends had gone. It turned out that they were actually stood about 10 feet from me but I was oblivious! I went and used my last $5 to buy a slice of over cooked pizza and ended up in bed by 1am.
OUCH.
The remnants of the sea legs I had from Wings coupled with the immense hangover/still pissed feeling whilst on a top bunk was cvertainly no picnic! I lazed in bed, considering the options of movement and disagreeing almost immediately with the prospect. I read for a while, putting off opening my only Christmas card but eventually gave in, saddened and reminded of everyone back home after reading mum's words. I felt like the day would just get worse from there on. Luckily it turned out to be alright! I waited around for Terry and Grant to get their act together so I didn't have to eat my pre-bought Christmas dinner alone, but their lack of urgency meant the kitchen had sold out by the time they went to buy theirs and I ended up eating with two Irish lads. The meal itself was alright, it was the first proper roast I'd had in months so it was a pleasant change. The meat was the main redeeming factor of the dish, roast chicken, roast pork and gammon, all in quite plentiful portions accompanied by a disgrace of a yorkshire pudding (that more resembled an egg custard tart than anything else), a pretty nice roast potato and undercooked from-frozen veg. My plans for the evening only materialised when I bumped into Daan and Elodie and Lisa and they were all telling me to come to a pool party at Stu's house. I was lucky enough to find time in my busy schedule of doing sweet F.A. and headed off with them all in Daan and Elodie's rented campervan. I didn't want to drink that night so let Daan drink so I could drive thier van back. It was an entertaining enough evening, everyone in quite high spirits and still drunk from the night before. I sat around in the pool and chatted for ages with the variety of staff that all worked on the boats for IslandDive, the company who owned Wings III and a few others. Lisa, Jo and Linn all stuck around at the house when Daan, Elodie and myself left, heading back to their campsite with the intention of eating and heading into town to meet people at midnight when the public holiday ended and the pubs re-opened! I really enjoyed the Dutch two's company, they were still very young but had good tastes in music and a lot to say about lots of different things. We ate and they got ready to go out and we were at Beaches by around midnight, sadly each of us flagging and not in any fit state to be going out, so I copied a bit of music for Daan to add to they now quite repetitive collection and they headed off, leaving for Brisbane in the morning.
Such a fun Boxing Day I can hardly remember. Most of the morning was spent faffing around, getting plans together then changing them, but eventually it was settled that we would take out Toby's 14ft catamaran for a sail around the bay. The girl's, Jo and Linn, were left with Marian whilst myself and Toby went to get the boat in the water at the marina and would meet them later on a beach near the lagoon. It was so much fun being shown what to do and getting the boat ready; attaching and raising the mast, fitting the sails, attaching the foresail, getting the thing in the water and keeping it from flaoting off. It was a full hour after picking it up from Tob'y before we had it in the water and were ready to set off. I was a little nervous at first but the warm water splashing up from every angle and a very slow start helped me get in the swing of things and soon we were cruising around the headland near the marina and gunning (maybe 4 or 5 knots) for the beach where we arranged to meet the girls. The girls had actually been miraculously transformed into one guy, Toby's housemate Dave who was from Leighton Buzzard, and he headed out with Toby for the first trip after we'd sat down to a wonderfully tasty and filling fish and chips on the beach! Jo and Linn arrived as Dave and Toby returned and headed out for trip two, leaving me and Dave to get acquianted. He was an interesting fellow; he told about his many years living in Africa, notably Zambia where I lived for a short while, and his antics as a safari guide and game warden in the national parks. His list of wild creatures he's shot is quite fantastic (all sedatives I might add, none to kill) and he explained how he couldn't abide the weather of England (quite oddly this was the point where I started to miss home the most, thinking of all the lovely overcast and rainy days I was missing out on at home) and then told me that he was a now a scuba diving instructor for IslandDive and that it was pretty cushty, if quite time-consuming, job.
The plan for the evening was to have a BBQ at Toby's, to which a lot of people were invited but none turned up. It actually just ended up being Jo, Linn, Toby, Dave, Lisa and myself there, all drinking lots, listening to a very random mix of music and chatting away. It ended up being a great night, but once we had left the hosue and headed into town I was forced to leave the shenanigans to carry on without me, being that I had a 7.30am bus to catch to Townsville, where I would be getting the ferry across to Magnetic Island to stay for 6 nights and do my open water diving course! Oh and to celebrate New Year too!

WHAT A BOAT!

Of what I expected from Powerplay, my original and first choice for this trip but for timing and circumstance, this boat delivered, and more! We walked into the boat from the rear deck and had our lunch waiting for us, chicken and salad wraps. While we munched on these we were more formally introduced to the crew and given a safety and general rules briefing. Dylan did most of the talking and sadly for him his jokes and wonderfully crafted false truthes fell mostly on unsuspectingly, gullible, foreign ears! We were taken from there to our respective cabins, myself being alone I got a single bed in a room with two other doubles one atop the other, both to be shared by girls who were travelling together. I forget two of them but the other two were Josefine and Linn, a Swedish pair who have been to all the same places as me since Airlie! The top deck was just purely wonderful, you could lie there catching some rays, hop down onto the nets between the pontoons of the catamaran, sit in the increasingly hot hot tub or perch on one of the seats located at the very tip of each pontoon. I loved it! We cut through the water, never very fast but always smoothly.
We stopped for the first dive at a place called Blue Pearl Bay. It was so much more vivid and colourful than when I had been snorkelling at the Tangalooma Wrecks. The fish, the coral, the beach, each more interesting and unique than the other. We were later told in a slide show of the pictures taken throughout the day that we had seen bastard fish (socalled because they always get in the back of a good shot, the bastards), loser fish (losers because once the find their mate the literally never leave their side) and some real fish like the coral crunching parrot fish, the blue-haloed six-banded angel fish and the aptly named zebra fish. Such marine life up close was sensational, I was even foolish enough to try and take a closer look at a couple of things and ended up half drowning myself! The most elusive of the creatures I was hoping to find was the sea turtle. Someone saw one on our first dive but no more were seen snorkelling.
We stayed moored where we had done our first dive; being left to our own devices and to socialise whilst waiting for the amazing dinner to be cooked. I suppose it's only right that I mention the captain of our ship. Stu was originally from England, Berkshire I think he said, and ended up staying out here after a trip a few years ago. He was a good laugh and was obsessed with gadgets; having had hydraulic tables installed that could lift two tonnes (only he knows why) and a remote control for the ships motors and rudder so he could sit on the deck and drive the boat! From the people I spoke to only a few really stood out. Daan and Elodie were a Dutch couple that turned out not to be a couple, Dan and Nick were Mexican and German respectively, a couple who had met in San Fran, Lisa was a mad German who was desperate to have a party on the boat but never got her wish, then of course Jo and Linn, and the only Australians there, Freddo and his girlfriend and her sister. The post-dinner slideshow was a success even if Stu and Dylan's jokes weren't understood by everyone or laughed at by anyone! The evening sky was my most anticipated element of the trip and it true sod's law style the clouds came in and covered up 80% of the sky and left me to pick our shreds of constellations between the breaks. There was, however, one of the most beautiful light shows going on to the West over in Airlie. A storm had hit the mountains and the lightning was spectacular from such a distance; every intricate fork and lick of electrical release was visible from our safe spot out at sea. I was the last to bed that night as I couldn't bare to leave the clear night sky but I conceded in the end and found myself gently rocked to sleep with the chopping and gentle slapping of the waves against the hull.
Inevitably it was an early morning, the crew having to rise before the masses so that the breakfast would be ready, and the boat was in position for the day's first dive. Apparently we had been moved in the early hours to a cove to check the weather and visibility but had left the spot for one of Dylan's favourites. Mackrel Bay was meant to be one of the best spots around the Whitsundays for scuba diving as there were many caverns and caves under water that the divers could explore. The descriptions, explanations and pictures from the dives were evidence of a pretty spectacular setting, though I really enjoyed the snorkelling along the shore too. I didn't use one of the floatation devices, a "noodle", on that dive so it made it a lot more tiring, though I did attempt a few duck-dives and get a bit closer to the fish, actually following some of the scuba divers underwater for a little while too. I saw my first stingray nestled at the sandy bottom between some corals on this dive too!
We were off to dive site number three very soon after everyone was back, looking forward to the sights of the next spot. Osprey Reef was yet another wonderfully beautiful reef, but there's only so much you can say about snorkelling. You just have to be there, and trust me I loved it!
The spectacular food was again delivered as we headed towards our final stop for the day; firstly Shitehaven Beach, and then a small walk over the island to the quite real and quite gorgeous Whitehaven Beach. We were shipped off in groups on the dinghy to the shore and reunited with our flip-flops, then were kindly escorted by our two hosties to the white sands of the beach. It was so wonderful. The sand is a very high percentage of silicon so makes it very fine, very white and very soft to the feet. As we headed across the large stretch of sand towards the shoreline there were many shallow inlets and tidal pools slowly seeping their way out to the sea as the tide fell back. You could see many little fish swimming in the much warmer waters that were left and there were even some small sharks circling in the narrow straits that led out to the open water, waiting for the unsuspecting fish to swim by and be gobbled up. We had a few hours on the beach and the majority of it was taken up by Toby taking lots of funny looking perspective photos and us going for a swim in the very warm waters.
Our evening was similar to our first, eating another wonderfully prepared and tasty meal, sitting on the deck of the boat chatting away and drinking goon. The stars that evening were stunning, and there were some quite large fish gathering around the lights that were being shone into the water from the stern, hunting and preying on all of the smaller fish in the water. I cannot describe how truly amazing it was.
The whole boat rose quite early the next morning, some of them heading off to do their last dive of the trip, others heading for a quite swim and a snorkel before we had to head back to land. It was such a wonderfully relaxed and enjoyable time on that boat that I wished it didn't have to end, but, like all good things, it did. As we cruised back to the mainland, Stu was kind enough to let a couple of people try their hand at the wheel. He also took great joy from presenting the actual wheel, unscrewed from it's direction-enhancing fixture, to the people who were sat in the hot tub! My enjoyment and memories from Wings III were such that I was compelled to buy the DVD of photos and a crew T-shirt just to keep it fresh in my mind how much I truly enjoyed the Whitsundays.